Thursday, September 1, 2011

Now that's obsessive.
Usually it's the little old lady bookkeeper embezzling from her employer of thirty years to cover her slot habit.
Understandable, in a dopaminergic sort of way.
She's triggering her reward pathways and going a little nuts from the neurotransmitters bathing her brain but she's not trying to rob the casino to keep playing the slot machine.

This guy, on the other hand is a) participating in a slower game, which in theory should trigger the dopamine cascades less frequently and b) he's ripping off Martha Stewart!?
From OregonLive :

Hussein Mehdi was a respected voice in mobile and wireless technology,
having published 18 articles on the subjects. He held a doctorate in
engineering and was the breadwinner for his wife and three kids. He
coached youth sports and supported environmental causes.

But the Eugene man also had an addiction to day trading.

At
first, he showed a knack for it, his lawyer says. But in time Mehdi
lost so much money that he grew obsessed with the market. He spent up to
12 hours a day trading stocks online, his losses eventually tallying
nearly $3 million.

Mehdi grew so desperate he came up with a
plan. In 2002, he began submitting phony claims for class-action
settlements arising out of securities litigation.

In just seven
years, he phonied papers to make fraudulent claims in at least 70
class-action suits for himself, friends and associates. The take:
$747,832.24. ...MORE

...A government sentencing memo described his hardworking, family-man
persona as a clever facade. In reality, prosecutors wrote, he was an
entirely different guy:

"(Mehdi) has been a cheat and a thief, a
con artist, a charlatan, a fraudster -- someone who illegally gained
almost three-quarters of a million dollars by swindling others." ...